Summary

GeoSciML accommodates the short-term goal of representing geoscience information associated with geologic maps and observations, as well as being extensible in the long-term to other geoscience data.
It draws from many geoscience data model efforts, and from these establishes a common suite of feature types based on geological criteria (units, structures, fossils) or artefacts of geological investigations (specimens, sections, measurements).
Supporting objects are also considered (timescale, lexicons, etc), so that they can be used as classifiers for the primary objects.

A number of predecessor projects have had a strong influence on the development of GeoSciML.
These include activities undertaken within national statutory bodies (British and Japanese Geological Surveys), in multi-jurisdictional contexts (the North American Data Model for geological maps) or oriented to an industry sector (eXploration and Mining Markup Language - XMML).